Clinical Experience #1

Surgery OPD, sometime around midday.

Ramanuj sir had just asked the next patient to come in while we were busily examining a cute balloon like swelling on a patient's wrist. It was about one centimetre wide, translucent, painless, and honestly, doing the fluctuation test (For the uninitiated: Fluctuation tests are sort of like the medical man's bubble wrap) on a swelling like that is way too much fun.

“Ah, what an interesting case!” I heard him say softly, as he turned to look at us with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Baba, apni oi bed e giye shue porun.”, he told the patient, “Ei daktaar babu ra apnake ektu porikkha korben.”

We positioned ourselves around the examination table as the patient lay down on it. Sir appeared by the bed as soon as the patient was comfortable, and stood in between me and Bambi on one side and a bunch of girls on the other.

“Apni pant ta ektu namiye din”, He told the patient, and turning towards us, he said, “What do you see?”

Sir had lectured us on the differences between observing and seeing a few minutes back, and in an effort to interest us (quite successfully, I might add) he had compared the process to what Bennedict Cumberbatch (Yes, he is a fan) does in Sherlock. I peeked over Bambi's shoulder determined to get the diagnosis right. The abdomen seemed normal but there was a swelling in the left groin, and below that...

The uncomfortably long inspectory silence was finally broken by my voice.

“Sir, he doesn't appear to have a penis...” I said uncertainly, because I had been concentrating so hard on the swelling that I was suddenly very confused about the position of a penis. (Later I learnt that I wasn't the only one; Bambi had assumed that the penis was under the scrotum.)

“Hmmmmmmmmm, and why do you think is that?”

(Please don't judge me for what I said next. Not only was I still reeling from the observation, but I got the diagnosis right on my second attempt.)

“Sir, it looks like the penis has retracted, and is trying to come out from that opening,” I said, pointing at the swelling, trying to imagine the anatomical route the penis might have taken.

“Retracted? The penis has retracted? What next? Apoptosis of the penis? Well, well, well.”

[More about the case: The man was an amputee. He was diagnosed with penile cancer about 20 years back and was treated by a partial amputation of the penis. He has come back after so long because the cancer had not been removed completely and has now involved the inguinal lymph nodes. It was a case of metastatic lymph node.]

Beyond the sem

I was worried that the bad thing which was supposed to kill me in 2012 was really my end semesters. Hah, I lived through it.

After the exam, we had lunch at Azad Hind Dhaba, and it was here that Bambi noticed that he didn't know the person who was sitting opposite to him. It was Farah, Wasim's cousin.

Bambi smiled, and said," Hey, I haven't seen you before, right?"
Farah was so engrossed in Priyanka's illustration of "nyaka" that she didn't hear that. Bambi stared for a solid 5 seconds and then turned towards me.
"I hate it when that happens." he said.
I choked on my kebab. Text book stuff, that!

Wasim made us walk all the way from the food place to his home. I thought it would be cool if I could include a link showing the entire route on Google maps, but I am too lazy. We saw one of those cool NFS-ey black and white cop cars, and I went up to the driver and asked him how many of those are in town. The amused driver told me that Salt Lake had only one. I swear that I was going to ask him if it could do spike strips but Bambi gave me one of his looks. I also taught Priyanka how to sing whiskey lullaby with three hajmola candys in your mouth. It's an art and if I am in a good mood, I can teach you for free.

We spent the afternoon at Wasim's grandma's. We played bluff and I realised that I was getting shamelessly good at it. Then we tried the good old memory game because the girls started complaining whenever we played FIFA. I discovered that using your OWN name in a memory game serves two purposes-
1. It makes everybody remember your name. Even Wasim's cousin, who knew me as Rick, remembers my name now.
2. It's easier to remember your own name than, say, carpet, especially when it is preceded by America and followed by flowers.

We also decided that "doing a bambi" officially means being late. Farah found it strange that some of us call Bambi "Bum", but by the time I was done explaining, I had found yet another admirer of the clever wordplay involved in Bumbee-Bambi.

I stayed over at Sayantan's last night. Sayantan has two dogs- An alsatian (although some members of his family swear that he is really a german shepherd) and a black dog of unidentifiable breed. The big alsatian baby sucks my great toe whenever he can reach it. It's really very harmless but I dislike a sticky toe, and I  freak out imagining all the awesome things that the dog could do to my toe. Sheru the dog is also very fond of my butt. He must imagine that I hide exciting things there because he sniffs it enthusiastically whenever I have my back turned to him which is surprisingly often because he keeps moving around me. It's strange also because I don't have many bones down there...

The next morning, I was woken up around 7 by what sounded like a guy humming a single tune over and over again. It was Sayantan singing his favourite song. The fact that he knows only a couple of lines does naught to discourage him, but it certainly compels ME to discourage him. In fact, it makes me lose sleep.

Cursing softly, I woke up to see what Sayantan was doing in the next room. I entered, mentally choosing the perfect early morning expletives, and then I saw it. He was bent over a copy-A BIOCHEMISTRY COPY- revising TCA cycle the day after our first sems ended. As I cleared my throat, he looked up and grinned sheepishly. I slowly walked over, looked at the cycle..and pointed out the mistake that I KNEW he had made.

We caught the earliest possible show off any movie ever by watching A game of shadows at 9:15. It was an entertaining two hours. I attempted to impress everyone by recognizing the theme music which is "Discombobulate" by Hans Zimmer. I should thank Ratul for making me listen to it. At that moment, however, I called it Bamboozle. They don't know that yet, obviously.

Prank

Usually, whenever the metro security stops me to check my bag, I direct an irritated look at them. Once, I said even said, “Ki dada, roj i toh dekhchen, kichu korar hole etodine ek adhta train to hijack kortam.” but he didn’t even look at me.
Today, however, I was very excited about getting my bag checked. An opportunity had presented itself and I was very eager to take it. I had a polythene bag which contained all the bones of the extremities. I wanted the man to check it.

With that plan, I entered the Belgachia metro station. The man at the entrance didn’t even look at me. A setback, yes, but the war was not lost. There was still the man before the magnetic gate. Slowly, I started walking towards the gate. Time stopped as I walked past the desk where the man sat. I looked towards him, trying desperately to look like a man who was upto no good, but he was just too busy digging his nose. I was almost past it when, all of a sudden, the man called me. I turned, like the heroine turns at the climactic scenes of old hindi movies, in slow-mo, and ran towards him.

As I enthusiastically placed my bag on the table, he asked me in a bored voice, “Ki ache?”
“Beshi kichu nei,” I said, “Kintu…ETA ache!”
I whipped out the femur and held it in front of his face. I wanted to use the skull but sadly, it’s in pieces.

His eyes popped out and he took half a step back.
“Ota Ki?” he said, pointing at it like it was a ghost.
“Haddi.” I said pleasantly.
“Nokol toh?” he asked hopefully.
“Na, na! Ashol toh! Ei dekhun!” I said, happily thrusting it forward.
He appeared to have recovered some of his composure, because he stood his ground.
“Manusher na Poshur?” he asked uncertainly.
“Manusher, kaku! Daktari te lage.”
“Kintu metro te kano niye jachcho?” he demanded to know.
“Sob jaigai lekha ache “Do not carry inflammable items, Kothao to bones niye jawa allowed na e kotha lekha nai.”

While he struggled to find an answer to that, the lady checker, who belongs to angshuman’s bone fame, appeared. Her face lit up in recognition at the sight of the bones.
“Tora abar haddi niye esechis?” She asked cheerfully. “Ora majhe majhei haddi niye ashe” She told her companion.

“Jan apni.” Said the man. “Ar anben na!”

I smiled at both of them and left.

N.B: I know that they are doing their jobs, and I really appreciate that...but this was too good an opportunity!

History revisited

Manosij Ghosh Dastidar, a student of class V, was distressed because of his inability in making friends.

Along with 60 other children, Manosij, Arkamita and Swarat have recently attended a six-day-long Art of Living workshop called Art Excel (or All-round training in Excellence) organised by South Point school at the school premises. "This course is tailor made for the age group 9-15," informed Bidisha Sen, an ex-IITian-turned-Art Excel instructor for Art of Living.

At the end of the workshop, the likes of Swarat, Manosij and Arkamita were looking as cheerful as children should be. "I’ve started making a lot of friends during the workshop. I don’t feel shy or fearful anymore," said Manosij.

Manosij, Did this really happen? :) Rohit says you were as normal as it gets within the limit of experimental error back then...

Bleach, Alchemy, Jumper...You name it.

I always knew that Japanese didn't have much talent in nomenclature. Try bleach for instance. Its an intricate graphic novel about the dead, alive and the in-betweens. They fight for honour, ascendancy, power...well, to put it bluntly, they fight to justify the tag that Bleach has of an action novel. Add a few teaspoons of romance and friendship and voilà! You have Bleach. I feel that its a reasonable question if someone wonders what prompted the author to call it bleach. Well, the protagonist has orange hair. And as he confides in one of the episodes, he DIDN'T bleach it. Apparently, in the new world order, that's all the reason you need to call something bleach.

You must have heard of full metal alchemist? I love it yes, but I do have complains about its name too. Maybe I am dumb, but I still don't see why you go around naming a guy with two metal limbs, FULL metal alchemist.

We have Jumper next. I liked the movie. So I tried the book. Once you get over the bad English, the naivety of the plot and the writers decisive ability to neglect all loose ends, its a tolerable book. But that holds true for only the first part. In the second leg of the book, he lets loose an avalanche of bad puns and ridiculous sub plots. I mean, you understand that you are witnessing something truly special when you go on reading about a man puking, peeing AND pooping for three chapters straight.
But you can only do it for so long. And so this poor guy cannot jump anymore because he starts...well, doing all of that. What happens now? His wife starts jumping. I completely lost interest at this point.

:)

Feeling indomitably happy.

Reconciliation.

And then there was this skit. Adhunik Mahabharat.

I was in the Chemistry lab, sniffing the little labelled bottles to glory, when Anwesha walked up to me and announced that i was in a skit. Really blunt and out of the blue sort of announcement, if you get my point.

I was almost hysterical before i wilted.

After they calmed me down, and i started talking coherently again, Tima told me that life wasnt really that bad. She even said that she would talk to "them" about letting me write the script if thats what i wanted. It took me all my brains to realise that she was trying to make me comfortable.

Srijata wrote a beautiful script which asked some very fundamental physics questions. But it was resplendent with the very, ah, questionable behaviour of the students. So it was dropped.

On the next beautiful Monday, i went to the biology tuition. Little did i expect what i wasnt supposed to expect. When i was walking out of the tuition, i ran into the aforementioned Tima who revealed that i was Judhistir and Bhaswar aka Dung aka Android(for his rather studious tendencies) was Sahadeb. We could have been knocked down with a feather.

And that was the mere beginning,folks, of the most enchanting rehearsal saga.

We did approximately 5 classes in 4 days(bunked for the teachers, in the name of rehearsals!) and practiced. At first there was this trouble with getting everyone to learn up there lines( I am telling you, we were a bunch of hopeless amateurs. Not that we are pros now, but we are slightly less amateurs). We witnessed an ego clash, a meltdown, a non cooperation movement(mini scale), we lauded Kiki's script*(and lamented our failure at acting upto it) and Roro's acting, we had a brief all fun and no work meeting in my house(chicken momo's, btw), We cried in despair- Me and Pc, specifically, we loved talking about the various ways in which we could flunk, but we didn't. Once and for all. I even noticed the princie laughing, Probir Sir-somewhat less murderous, Arijit Sir-Chuckling, Dilip Sir-oh well...

That screams success. And so, delirious with success, we, the men in punjabis and the women in sari's( petty pretty and half of them trippy) tried to squeeze 13 of ourselves in two cars. Gist is that we went to south city to celebrate success.

After coming back home, and cleansing my mind of the tit bits of delirium, I heaved a huge sigh of content.

And then came the anguished bellow.

I systematically worked out a timetable, and began working on the MCQ's.

Night after night i slept instead of working, subjecting the timetable to regrettable neglect as i am wont to do, and before i knew it, I was 7 days away from the MCQ's.

It was then that i found the diary of Adrian Mole. Written my Susan Townsend.

Its a story about a pervy kid of 15 and two third years( the kid's very particular about the two third). How he experiences the teenage blues, how he tackles the lack of people to appreciate his intellectual self, how the incompetent BBC people didnt recognise the poet in him, how everyone seemed to be impressed by his vocabulary, how he didnt know what do do with the central section of his novel which just needed to be begun and ended fittingly, How both his parents were carrying on clandestine affairs in the summer of 1983, how both of them consummated the relationship(not details here, no), resulting in two kids none of which helped Adrian's life in anyway, how his running away from home plan came to a most anticlimactic end ...and so on and so forth. It ends on a high after Adrian makes out.

A funny book, undoubtedly, but not one deserving indiscriminate adulation. I have read better.

On Friday evening, i was extremely tensed because i realised that i knew nothing of volumetric expansion or the profundity of apparent depth in Refraction. So i switched on the television to ease the knotted nerves. (nice logic, na?)

Whaddya know? I ended up watching the talented Mr. Ripley. Impressive movie! jude Law looked so darn convincing.

Saturday offered tears of the Sun after a day filled with Bio and Chemistry specific misery. It was TOO much, really. I succumbed to my mind's need. Antoine Fuqua's film depicted a rescume attempt in the midst of An African civil war in Nigeria. I really became morally conscious after watching the atrocities depicted in the film.

Sunday night. taut nerves because i find that the TMH problems are so TOTALLY beyond me. So i relented and let instincts take control. I ended up watching The Condemned. It had some action, a terrible storyline, transparent acting...in short a perfect tomato.

Needless to say(wonder why people put it just before they are saying it), all those movies did a bit of NO GOOD to my preparation.

And so, after two days of intense MCQs, talking about which is a taboo on principle, i am free to blog and thus express myself freely.

en route to home, I saw the temporary bamboo fences that they are erecting along the E.M Bypass. they do so create a pujo-pujo atmosphere, eh? Its a downright pity that we have the Half yearlies after the Pujos. But i aint complaining. I dont want it before the pujos.

Evening, maters!



*Script : Adhunik mahabharat elaborates on a scene in the Pandava abode where they are deliberating war with Durjodhon. A reporter rudely intrudes and their war dilemma makes it to the news channel-420 ghonta. In spite of the telling arguements that Judhistir(which is me) advances, they still decide on war because of a certain Dada who comes in the end and tells them that he is the ultimate authority who solves all the problems in the world. Incidentally, he was wearing an America T-shirt and the music when he entered was the Yankee doodle. Oh and yeah, Rohan was the star with the guitar.